I was never keen on Schnobb as a replacement for Michel Labrecque in that post. Schnobb got the job as a consolation prize for not winning a council seat in 2013 – mind you, Labrecque had got the job in 2009 after losing the mayoralty of the Plateau, so this kind of patronage appointment was nearly traditional – and on Schnobb’s watch the STM saw budget compressions that reduced services. Maybe he has a chance of doing better under a Projet administration. We’ll see.

I have no extra information, but my impression is that Projet might not want to be seen to emulate previous administrations in automatically sacking people like Schnobb – people in patronage positions – to supplant them with their own protégés.

Even if Schnobb was far from the best person for the job, he at least has four years of experience and can continue with what he has going while working with the people he’s built relationships with over the years. When you put a new person in, even if they are more qualified, they can’t hit the ground running. Everything has to be learnt all over again and new relationships have to be built (and there’s no guarantee that the new person is going to be any better at the job). I think it speaks well of the new administration that they’re not using it as a cynical patronage position to reward their buddies.

Continuing on my previous post, I’ve seen what a bureaucracy based entirely on nepotism looks like having seen a municipal election take place in Bogotá, Colombia, where I currently live. When a new mayor is elected here (which happens every election cycle due to term limits), from what I’ve been told, almost the entire bureaucracy is sacked. Managers are replaced by friends, family, and donors of the mayor and councillors and those in lower ranks are replaced by the friends and family of the managers. These are rarely people hired because they’re qualified and even if they were, it still means that every department of the government has to be completely reorganised and everyone has to learn how to do a new job (while trying to purge any achievements made by the previous administration). For the first year, the whole thing is a mess and doesn’t get much better for the remaining years. I imagine that things are probably running pretty smoothly around the time that a new mayor is elected and the whole process starts over again. I was talking to someone here about this once and he couldn’t believe that, in Canada, we have professional bureaucracies that stay in place from election to election.

Having seen this in action, I’m happy to see Schnobb keep his job, even if I never thought he was particularly good at it. I hope it sets an example for future administrations.

My impression is that Schnobb was limited in what he could do by the Coderre administration, due to lack of funding. He seems to be very enthousiastic about service improvements, and in recent interviews he did say that the rate of service improvements would increase with the Plante administration. And contrarily to many of his predecessors and other members of the STM board, he does use transit in his daily life – I see him frequently in the metro. At least he has first-hand experience as a user, it doesn’t hurt when you’re president of a transit organisation.